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THE MAN 

WITHOUT A COUNTRY 








4 














Illustrated by Milo Winter 

ALBERT WHITMAN & COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS 

CHICAGO U. S. A. 


c.o 


i, utrtiii ■ 

THE MAN WITHOUT 
A COUNTRY 


By Edward Everett Hale 


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OTHER FULLY ILLUSTRATED 
ALBERT WHITMAN CLASSICS 

THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN 

THE LITTLE LAME PRINCE 

THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER 

THE DOG OF FLANDERS 

YOUNG FOLKS' UNCLE TOM'S CABIN 

Printed in the U. S. A. 

6 


SEP 20’27 ", ^ 

©Cl A1 004239 O 







INTRODUCTION 


The history of The Man Without a 
Country is extremely interesting. The book 
was produced by one of those periods of 
stress when national feeling is aroused and 
the sentiments of the people exalted by the 
ardor of the crises. 

The events that preceded the Civil War 
awoke the genius of many writers. Due to 
the agitation of the times Harriet Beecher 
Stowe created her Uncle Tom s Cabin and 
James Russell Lowell his Bigelow Papers . 
In the stress of actual warfare Julia Ward 


7 


Howe composed her Battle Hymn of the 
Republic. 

During this same period of strife Edward 
Everett Hale wrote The Man Without a 
Country in one of the darkest hours of the 
War as an appeal for a unified support of 
the Northern cause. Its effect was instan¬ 
taneous and it remains to this day one of 
the greatest stories of patriotism that has 
ever been written. 

The ManWithout a Country was written 
in 1863 in one of the darkest hours of the 
Civil War. The North was on the verge of 
defeat. Shortly before August, 1862, Pope’s 
army had been destroyed by the armies of 
Lee and Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley, 
and in December of the same year General 
Burnside’s army had been decisively de¬ 
feated in one of the bloodiest battles of the 
War at Fredericksburg. 

The victorious Southern armies under 
their able generals were threatening the 


safety of Washington. Popular sentiment 
wavered between the desire for peace and 
the desire for victory. 

In the midst of this agitation The Man 
Without a Country was published serially 
in the Atlantic Monthly without the au¬ 
thor’s name. It created a great impression 
and contributed to the success of the War 
party in maintaining the battle until the 
surrender of the Southern forces. 

Due to the fact that the book was pub¬ 
lished without the author’s name, many 
people believed it to be the account of an 
actual occurrence. For several years inter¬ 
ested citizens flooded the State Department 
and the Navy Department with letters re¬ 
questing further details concerning the life 
of Philip Nolan. These letters, of course, 
could not be answered. 

In the midst of this frenzy of popular 
questioning it gradually became known 
that the incident was wholly imaginary 


and came from the pen of a Congregation- 
alist minister, Edward Everett Hale. 

Then a new series of letters began to flow. 
By a strange coincidence there had been a 
real Philip Nolan who had served in the 
American Army and who had resided at 
one time in Texas. His relatives resented 
the use of his name in the story because 
many people who had met him confused 
him with the Nolan of the story. The 
matter was finally settled to the satisfac¬ 
tion of all concerned. 

The author, Edward Everett Hale, was 
a Congregationalist minister. He was born 
in Boston in 1822 and was a graduate of 
Harvard University. He wrote many in¬ 
teresting articles and stories, but none of 
them ever gained the popularity or frame 
of The Man Without a Country. 

It is interesting to note that the author 
of this patriotic tale was himself the great- 
nephew of a famous patriot. His great- 


uncle was the revolutionary leader, Nathan 
Hale, who was executed by the British as 
a spy in 1776. And The Man Without a 
Country is worthy of a relative of the 
patriot whose speech on the scaffold is re¬ 
membered even to this day: 

“/ regret that I have but one life to give 
for my country 

W. Montgomery Major 




s 











CONTENTS 


Introduction .Page 7 

The Man Without A Country. 19 

Incidental Notes. 124 


13 






LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Page 

“I Wish I May Never Hear of the United States 

Again”...Frontispiece 


He Never Saw or Heard of His Country Again . 1 8 

That Evening He Asked for Nolan. 25 

When the President of the Court Asked Him. . 29 

Old Morgan Was Terribly Shocked. 32 

“You Will Receive Your Written Orders Here 

This Evening” . 33 

Sending Him by Water from Fort Adams to 

New Orleans. 37 

The Poor Fellow Swung the Book into the Sea 5 1 


14 







LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
(Continued) 

Page 

The Dancing Went on with Spirit. 57 

Shall I have the Honor of Dancing”. 61 

However, in one, at least of the Frigate Duels 

with the English. 65 

There He Stayed, Captain of that Gun. 69 

These were very Curious, indeed. 75 

He Read just Five Hours a Day. 77 

We were all Looking over the Rail when the 

Message came . 83 

Then there was such a Yell of Delight. 87 

When He was Catching Wild Horses in Texas 1 00 

More Anxious than ever to Teach the Boys. . . 103 

The Doctor has been Watching Him Carefully 1 06 

O, Danforth, He said, ‘‘I know I am Dying” 1 09 

We looked in His Bible and there was a Slip of 

Paper . 119 


15 















THE MAN WITHOUT 
A COUNTRY 



17 




He never saw or heard of his country again. 


18 



























THE MAN WITHOUT 
A COUNTRY 


I SUPPOSE that very few casual read¬ 
ers of the “New York Herald” of 
August 13, 1863, observed, in an ob- 
cure corner, among the “Deaths,” the 
announcement— 

“Nolan. Died, on board U. S. Corvette Levant. 
Lat. 2° 11' S., Long. 131° W., on the 11th of May, 
Philip Nolan.” 

I happened to observe it, because I was 


19 


20 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


stranded at the old Mission House in 
Mackinaw, waiting for a Lake Superior 
steamer which did not choose to come, and 
I was devouring to the very stubble all the 
current literature I could get hold of, even 
down to the deaths and marriages in the 
“Herald.” My memory for names and 
people is good, and the reader will see, as 
he goes on, that I had reason enough to 
remember Philip Nolan. There are hun¬ 
dreds of readers who would have paused at 
that announcement, if the officer of the 
“Levant” who reported it had chosen to 
make it thus. “Died, May 11, The Man 
Without a Country” For it was as “The 
Man Without a Country” that poor Philip 
Nolan had generally been known by the 
officers who had him in charge during 
some fifty years, as indeed, by all the men 
who sailed under them. I dare say there is 
many a man who has taken wine with him 





THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


21 


once a fortnight, in three years’ cruise, 
who never knew that his name was 
“Nolan,” or whether the poor wretch had 
any name at all. 

There can now be no possible harm in 
telling this poor creature’s story. Reason 
enough there has been till now, ever since 
Madison’s administration went out in 
1817, for very strict secrecy, the secrecy of 
honor itself, among the gentlemen of the 
navy who have had Nolan in successive 
charge. And certainly it speaks well for 
the esprit de corps of the profession, and 
the personal honor of its members, that to 
the press this man’s story has been wholly 
unknown—and, I think, to the country at 
large also. I have reason to think from 
some investigations I made in the Naval 
Archives when I was attached to the Bureau 
of Construction, that every official report 
relating to him was burned when Ross 




22 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


burned the public buildings at Washing¬ 
ton. One of the Tuckers, or possibly one 
of the Watsons, had Nolan in charge at 
the end of the war; and when, on returning 
from his cruise, he reported at Washington 
to one of the Crowninshields—who was in 
the Navy Department when he came home 
he found that the Department ignored 
the whole business. Whether they really 
knew nothing about it, or whether it was 
a ‘ Non mi ricordo ,” determined on as a 
piece of policy, I do not know. But this I 
do know, that since 1817, and possibly 
before, no naval officer has mentioned 
Nolan in his report of a cruise. 

But, as I say, there is no need for secrecy 
any longer. And now the poor creature is 
dead, it seems to me worth while to tell a 
little of his story, by way of showing young 
Americans of today what it is to be A Man 
Without a Country . 






THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


23 



Philip Nolan was as fine a young officer 
as there was in the “Legion of the West/’ 
as the Western division of our army was 
then called. When Aaron Burr made his 
first dashing expedition down to New Or¬ 
leans in 1805, at Fort Massac, or some¬ 
where above on the river, he met, as the 
Devil would have it, this gay, dashing, 
bright young fellow; at some dinner-party, 
I think. Burr marked him, talked to him, 
walked with him, took him a day or two’s 
voyage in his flat-boat and, in short, fas¬ 
cinated him. For the next year, barrack- 
life was very tame to poor Nolan. He 







24 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


occasionally availed himself of the permis¬ 
sion the great man had given him to write 
to him. Long, high-worded, stilted letters 
the poor boy wrote and rewrote and copied. 
But never a line did he have in reply from 
the gay deceiver. The other boys in the 
garrison sneered at him, because he sacri¬ 
ficed in this unrequited affection for a 
politician the time which they devoted to 
Monongahela, hazard and high-low-jack. 
Bourbon, euchre, and poker were still un¬ 
known. But one day Nolan had his re¬ 
venge. This time Burr came down the 
river, not as an attorney seeking a place 
for his office, but as a disguised conqueror. 
He had defeated I know not how many 
district attorneys; he had dined at I know 
not how many public dinners; he had been 
heralded in I know not how many Weekly 
Arguses, and it was rumored that he had 
cin army behind him and an empire before 














That evening he ashed, jor Nolan. 


25 





















THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


27 


him. It was a great day—his arrival—to 
poor Nolan. Burr had not been at the fort 
an hour before he sent for him. That 
evening he asked Nolan to take him out in 
his skiff, to show him a cane-brake or a 
cotton-wood tree, as he said—really to 
seduce him; and by the time the sail was 
over, Nolan was enlisted body and soul. 
From that time, though he did not yet 
know it, he lived as A Man Without a 
Country .” 

What Burr meant to do I know no more 
than you, dear reader. It is none of our 
business just now. Only, when the grand 
catastrophe came, and Jefferson and the 
House of Virginia of that day undertook 
to break on the wheel all the possible 
Clarences of the then House of York, by 
the great treason trial at Richmond, some 
of the lesser fry in that distant Mississippi 
Valley, which was farther from us than 






28 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


Puget’s Sound is today, introduced the 
like novelty on their provincial stage; and, 
to while away the monotony of the summer 
at Fort Adams, got up, for spectacles, a 
string of court-martials on the officers 
there. One and another of the colonels and 
majors were tried, and, to fill out the list, 
little Nolan, against whom, Heaven knows, 
there was evidence enough—that he was 
sick of the service, had been willing to be 
false to it, and would have obeyed any 
order to march any-whither with any one 
who would follow him had the order been 
signed, “By command of his Exc. A. Burr.” 
The courts dragged on. The big flies es¬ 
caped—rightly for all I know. Nolan was 
proved guilty enough, as I say; yet you 
and I would never have heard of him, 
reader, but that, when the president of the 
court asked him at the close whether he 
wished to say anything to show that he 






had always been faithful to the United 
States, he cried out, in a fit of frenzy: 

“Damn the United States! 1 wish I may 
never hear of the United States again!” 








30 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 

..■ ■ ■ ■ ■■■■.■ ■ ■ ■ ■■ ■ ■■■ ■■ ni 

I suppose he did not know how the words 
shocked old Colonel Morgan, who was 
holding the court. Half the officers who 
sat in it had served through the Revolu¬ 
tion, and their lives, not to say their necks, 
had been risked for the very idea which he 
so cavalierly cursed in his madness. He, 
on his part, had grown up in the West of 
those days, in the midst of ‘‘Spanish plot,” 
“Orleans plot,” and all the rest. He had 
been educated on a plantation where the 
finest company was a Spanish officer or a 
French merchant from Orleans. His educa¬ 
tion, such as it was, had been perfected in 
commercial expeditions to Vera Cruz, and 
I think he told me his father once hired an 
Englishman to be a private tutor for a 
winter on the plantation. He had spent 
half his youth with an older brother, hunt¬ 
ing horses in Texas; and, in a word, to 
him “United States” was scarcely a reality. 







THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 31 

.......■ ■ ■■■¥■ ■■■■■ri■■■■■■■■r 

Yet he had been fed by “United States’’ 
for all the years since he had been in the 
army. He had sworn on his faith as a 
Christian to be true to “United States.’’ 
It was “United States’’ which gave him 
the uniform he wore, and the sword by his 
side. Nay, my poor Nolan, it was only 
because “United States’’ had picked you 
out first as one of her own confidential men 
of honor that “A. Burr’’ cared for you a 
straw more than for the flat-boat men 
who sailed his ark for him. I do not 
excuse Nolan; I only explain to the reader 
why he damned his country, and wished 
he might never hear her name again. 

He never did hear her name but once 
again. From that moment, Sept. 23, 1807, 
till the day he died, May 11, 1863, he 
never heard her name again. For that 
half-century and more he was a man with¬ 
out a country. 




32 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 



Old Morgan was terribly shocked. 

Old Morgan, as I said, was terribly 
shocked. If Nolan had compared George 
Washington to Benedict Arnold, or had 
cried, ‘God save King George,” Morgan 
would not have felt worse. He called the 
court into his private room, and returned 
in fifteen minutes, with a face like a sheet, 
to say: 





THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 33 

Fumim.mmmim.... 



“Prisoner,hear the sentence of the Court! 
The Court decides, subject to the approval 
of the President, that you never hear the 
name of the United States again.” 













34 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


Nolan laughed. But nobody else 
laughed. Old Morgan was too solemn, 
and the whole room was hushed dead as 
night for a minute. Even Nolan lost his 
swagger in a moment. Then Morgan 
added— 

‘‘Mr. Marshal, take the prisoner to Or¬ 
leans in an armed boat, and deliver him 
to the naval commander there.’’ 

The marshal gave his orders and the 
prisoner was taken out of court. 

“Mr. Marshal,’’continued old Morgan, 
“see that no one mentions the United 
States to the prisoner. Mr. Marshal, make 
my respects to Lieutenant Mitchell at Or¬ 
leans, and request him to order that no 
one shall mention the United States to 
the prisoner while he is on board ship. 
You will receive your written orders from 
the officer on duty here this evening. The 
Court is adjourned without day.” 




THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


35 




I have always supposed that Colonel 
Morgan himself took the proceedings of 
the Court to Washington City, and ex¬ 
plained them to Mr. Jefferson. Certain it 
is that the President approved them— 
certain, that is, if I may believe the men 
who say they have seen his signature. Be¬ 
fore the “Nautilus” got around from New 
Orleans to the Northern Atlantic coast 
with the prisoner on board, the sentence 
had been approved, and he was a man 
without a country. 

The plan then adopted was substan¬ 
tially the same which was necessarily fol¬ 
lowed ever after. Perhaps it was suggested 
by the necessity of sending him by water 





36 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


from Fort Adams and Orleans. The Secre¬ 
tary of the Navy—it must have been the 
first Crowninshield, though he is a man I 
do not remember—was requested to put 
Nolan on board a government vessel bound 
on a long cruise, and to direct that he 
should be only so far confined there as to 
make it certain that he never saw or heard 
of the country. We had few long cruises 
then, and the navy was very much out of 
favor; and as almost all of this story is 
traditional, as I have explained, I do not 
know certainly what his first cruise was. 
But the commander to whom he was in¬ 
trusted—perhaps it was Tingey or Shaw, 
though I think it was one of the younger 
men—we are all old enough now—regu¬ 
lated the etiquette and the precautions of 
the affair, and according to his scheme 
they were carried out, I suppose, till Nolan 
died. 







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Sending him by water from Fort Adams to New Orleans. 



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THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


39 


When I was second officer of the “In¬ 
trepid,” some thirty years after, I saw the 
original paper of instructions. I have been 
sorry ever since that I did not copy the 
whole of it. It ran, however, much in this 
way: 


“Washington (with a date, which 
must have been late in 1807). 

“Sir:—You will receive from Lieutenant 
Neale the person of Philip Nolan, late a 
lieutenant in the United States Army. 

‘ ‘This person on his trial by court-martial 
expressed, with an oath, the wish that he 
might never hear of the United States 
again.’ 

“The Court sentenced him to have his 
wish fulfilled. 





40 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


“For the present, the execution of the 
order is intrusted by the President to this 
Department. 

“You will take the prisoner on board 
your ship, and keep him there with such 
precautions as shall prevent his escape. 

“You will provide him with such quar¬ 
ters, rations, and clothing as would be 
proper for an officer of his late rank, if he 
were a passenger on your vessel on the busi¬ 
ness of his Government. 

“The gentlemen on board will make any 
arrangements agreeable to themselves re¬ 
garding his society. He is to be exposed 
to no indignity of any kind, nor is he ever 
unnecessarily to be reminded that he is a 
prisoner. 

“But under no circumstances is he ever 
to hear of his country or to see any informa¬ 
tion regarding it; and you will especially 
caution all the officers under your com¬ 
mand to take care that, in the various in¬ 
dulgences which may be granted, this rule, 
in which his punishment is involved, shall 
not be broken. 






THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


41 


“It is the intention of the Government 
that he shall never again see the country 
which he has disowned. Before the end of 
your cruise you will receive orders which 
will give effect to this intention. 

“Respectfully yours, 

“W. SOUTHARD, for the 
“Secretary of the Navy.” 


If I had only preserved the whole of this 
paper, there would be no break in the be¬ 
ginning of my sketch of this story. For 
Captain Shaw, if it were he, handed it to 
his successor in the charge, and he to his, 
and I suppose the commander of the 
“Levant” has it today as his authority for 
keeping this man in his mild custody. 




42 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


The rule adopted on board the ships on 
which I have met “the man without a 
country’’ was, I think, transmitted from 
the beginning. No mess liked to have him 
permanently, because his presence cut off 
all talk of home or of the prospect of 
return, of politics or letters, of peace or of 
war—cut off more than half the talk men 
liked to have at sea. But it was always 
thought too hard that he should never 
meet the rest of us, except to touch hats, 
and we finally sank into one system. He 
was not permitted to talk with the men 
unless an officer was by. With officers he 
had unrestrained intercourse, as far as 
they and he chose. But he grew shy, though 
he had favorites: I was one. Then the 
captain always asked him to dinner on 
Monday. Every mess in succession took 
up the invitation in its turn. According 
to the size of the ship, you had him at 




THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


43 


your mess more or less often at dinner. 
His breakfast he ate in his own state-room 
—he always had a state-room—which was 
where a sentinel or somebody on the watch 
could see the door. And whatever else he 
ate or drank, he ate or drank alone. Some¬ 
times, when the marines or sailors had 
any special jollification, they were per¬ 
mitted to invite “Plain-Buttons, as they 
called him. Then Nolan was sent with 
some officer, and the men were forbidden 
to speak of home while he was there. I 
believe the theory was that the sight of his 
punishment did them good. They called 
him “Plain-Buttons,” because while he al¬ 
ways chose to wear a regulation army- 
uniform, he was not permitted to wear the 
army-button, for the reason that it bore 
either the initials or the insignia of the 
country he had disowned. 




44 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


I remember, soon after I joined the navy, 
I was on shore with some of the older 
officers from our ship and from the 
“Brandywine,” which we had met at Alex¬ 
andria. We had leave to make a party 
and go up to Cairo and the Pyramids. As 
we jogged along (you went on donkeys 
then), some of the gentlemen (we boys 
called them “Dons,” but the phrase was 
long since changed) fell to talking about 
Nolan, and some one told the system which 
was adopted from the first about his books 
and other reading. As he was almost never 
permitted to go on shore, even though the 
vessel lay in port for months, his time at 
the best hung heavy; and everybody was 
permitted to lend him books, if they were 





THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


45 



not published in America and made no 
allusion to it. These were common enough 
in the old days, when people in the other 
hemisphere talked of the United States as 
little as we do of Paraguay. He had almost 
all the foreign papers that came into the 
ship, sooner or later; only somebody must 
go over them first, and cut out any adver¬ 
tisement or stray paragraph that alluded 
to America. This was a little cruel some¬ 
times, when the back of what was cut out 
might be as innocent as Hesiod. Right in 
the midst of one of Napoleon’s battles, or 













46 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


one of Canning’s speeches, poor Nolan 
would find a great hole, because on the 
back of the page of that paper there had 
been an advertisement of a packet for New 
York, or a scrap from the President’s mes¬ 
sage. I say this was the first time I ever 
heard of this plan, which afterwards I had 
enough and more than enough to do with. 
I remember it, because poor Phillips, who 
was of the party, as soon as the allusion 
t to reading was made, told a story of some¬ 
thing which happened at the Cape of Good 
Hope on Nolan’s first voyage; and it is 
the only thing f ever knew of that voyage. 
They had touched at the Cape, and had 
done the civil thing with the English Ad¬ 
miral and the fleet, and then, leaving for a 
long cruise up the Indian Ocean, Phillips 
had borrowed a lot of English books from 
an officer, which in those days, as indeed 
in these, was quite a windfall. Among 




THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


47 


them, as the Devil would order, was the 
“Lay of the Last Minstrel,” which they 
had all of them heard of, but which most 
of them had never seen. I think it could 
not have been published long. Well, nobody 
thought there could be any risk of any¬ 
thing national in that, though Phillips 
swore old Shaw had cut out the “Tempest 
from Shakespeare before he let Nolan have 
it, because he said “the Bermudas ought 
to be ours, and, by Jove, should be one 
day.” So Nolan was permitted to join 
the circle one afternoon when a lot of them 
sat on deck smoking and reading aloud. 
People do not do such things so often 
now; but when 1 was young we got rid of 
a great deal of time so. Well, it so hap¬ 
pened that in his turn Nolan took the 
book and read to the others; and he read 
very well, as I know. Nobody in the circle 
knew a line of the poem, only it was all 




48 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


magic and Border chivalry, and was ten 
thousand years ago. Poor Nolan read 
steadily through the fifth canto, stopped a 
minute and drank something, and then 
began, without a thought of what was 
coming: 

“Breathes there the man, with soul so 
dead, 

Who never to himself hath said,”— 

It seems impossible to us that anybody 
ever heard this for the first time; but all 
these fellows did then, and poor Nolan 
himself went on still, unconsciously or 
mechanically— 

“This is my own, my native land!” 

Then they all saw something was to pay; 
but he expected to get through, I suppose, 
turned a little pale, but plunged on— 

Whose heart hath ne’er within him 
burned, 

As home his footsteps he hath turned 





THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


49 


From wandering on a foreign 
strand?— 

If such there breathe, go, mark him 
well,”— 

By this time the men were all beside 
themselves, wishing there was any way to 
make him turn over two pages; but he had 
not quite presence of mind for that; he 
gagged a little, colored crimson, and stag¬ 
gered on,— 

For him no minstrel raptures swell; 
High though his titles, proud his name, 
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim, 
Despite these titles, power, and pelf, 
The wretch, concentred all in self,”— 
And here the poor fellow choked, could 
not go on, but started up, swung the book 
into the sea, vanished into his state-room, 
“And by Jove,” said Phillips, “we did not 
see him for two months again. And I had 
to make up some beggarly story to that 





50 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 

t nnmnimimnmnmm i mmMmnmniMMii* 

English surgeon why I did not return his 
Walter Scott to him.” 

That story shows about the time when 
Nolan’s braggadocio must have broken 
down. At first, they said, he took a very 
high tone, considered his imprisonment a 
mere farce, affected to enjoy the voyage, 
and all that; but Phillips said that after 
he came out of his state-room he never 
was the same man again. He never read 
aloud again, unless it was the Bible or 
Shakespeare, or something else he was sure 
of. But it was not that merely. He never 
entered in with the other young men ex¬ 
actly as a companion again. He was always 
shy afterwards, when I knew him—very 
seldom spoke, unless he was spoken to, 
except to a very few friends. He lighted up 
occasionally—I remember late in his life 
hearing him fairly eloquent on something 
which had been suggested to him by one 






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jMm 


The poor fellow swung 


the booh into the sea. 


51 














































THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


53 


of Flechier’s sermons—but generally he had 
the nervous, tired look of a heart-wounded 
man. 

When Captain Shaw was coming home 
—if, as I say, it was Shaw—rather to the 
surprise of everybody they made one of the 
Windward Islands, and lay off and on for 
nearly a week. The boys said the officers 
were sick of salt-junk, and meant to have 
turtle-soup before they came home. But 
after several days the “Warren” came to 
the same rendezvous; they exchanged 
signals; she sent to Phillips and these home- 
ward-bound men letters and papers, and 
told them she was outward-bound, per¬ 
haps to the Mediterranean, and took poor 
Nolan and his traps on the boat back to 
try his second cruise. He looked very blank 
when he was told to get ready to join her. 
He had known enough of the signs of the 
sky to know that till that moment he was 





54 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


going “home.” But this was a distinct 
evidence of something he had not thought 
of, perhaps—that there was no going home 
for him, even to a prison. And this was the 
first of some twenty such transfers, which 
brought him sooner or later into half our 
best vessel^, but which kept him all his 
life at least some hundred miles from the 
country he had hoped he might never hear 
of again. 









THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


55 


It may have been on that second cruise 
—it was once when he was up the Mediter¬ 
ranean—that Mrs. Graff, the celebrated 
Southern beauty of those days, danced 
with him. They had been lying a long time 
in the Bay of Naples, and the officers were 
very intimate in the English fleet, and 
there had been great festivities, and our 
men thought they must give a great ball 
on board the ship. How they ever did it 
on board the “Warren” I am sure I do 
not know. Perhaps it was not the “War¬ 
ren,” or perhaps ladies did not take up so 
much room as they do now. They wanted 
to use Nolan’s state-room for something, 
and they hated to do it without asking 
him to the ball; so the captain said they 





56 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 

T TTTTTTTTTTTTTTiT¥TrrTTTTTTTTTTXTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTi'T"I 

might ask him, if they would be responsible 
that he did not talk with the wrong people, 
“who would give him intelligence.” So the 
dance went on, the finest party that had 
ever been known, I dare say; for I never 
heard of a man-of-war ball that was not. 
For ladies they had the family of the Ameri¬ 
can consul, one or two travelers who had 
adventured so far, and a nice bevy of 
English girls and matrons, perhaps Lady 
Hamilton herself. 

Well, different officers relieved each other 
in standing and talking with Nolan in a 
friendly way, so as to be sure that nobody 
else spoke to him. The dancing went on 
with spirit, and after a while even the 
fellows who took this honorary guard of 
Nolan ceased to fear any contretemps. Only 
when some English lady—Lady Hamilton, 
as I said, perhaps—called for a set of 
“American dances,” an odd thing hap- 







The dancing went on with spirit 
57 


























* 









Vfi 
























































• 
















THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


59 


pened. Everybody then danced contra- 
dances. The black band, nothing loath, 
conferred as to what “American dances” 
were, and started off with “Virginia Reel,” 
which followed with “Money-Musk,” 
which, in its turn in those days, should 
have been followed by “The Old Thirteen.” 
But just as Dick, the leader, tapped for 
his fiddles to begin, and bent forward, 
about to say, in true negro state, “ ‘The 
Old Thirteen,’ gentlemen and ladies!” as 
he had said “ ‘Virginny Reel,’ if you 
please!” and “ ‘Money-Musk,’ if you 
please!” the captain’s boy tapped him on 
the shoulder, whispered to him, and he 
did not announce the name of the dance; 
he merely bowed, began on the air, and 
they all fell to—the officers teaching the 
English girls the figure, but not telling 
them why it had no name. 







60 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


But that is not the story I started to 
tell. As the dancing went on, Nolan and 
our fellows all got at ease, as I said—so 
miich so, that it seemed quite natural for 
him to bow to that splendid Mrs. Graff, 
and say— 

“I hope you have not forgotten me. Miss 
Rutledge. Shall I have the honor of danc¬ 
ing?” 

He did it so quickly, that Fellows, who 
was with him, could not hinder him. She 
laughed and said— 

‘‘I am not Miss Rutledge any longer, Mr. 
Nolan; but I will dance all the same,” just 
nodded to Fellows, as if to say he must 
leave Mr. Nolan to her, and led him off to 
the place where the dance was forming. 

Nolan thought he had got his chance. 
He had known her at Philadelphia, and at 
other places had met her, and this was a 
godsend. You could not talk in contra- 












- - -- 



-A)W- 


Nv' 

“Shall I have the honor of dancing?'' 


61 



























































THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


63 


dances, as you do in cotillions, or even in 
the pauses of waltzing; but there were 
chances for tongues and sounds as well as 
for eyes and blushes. He began with her 
travels, and Europe, and Vesuvius, and 
the French; and then, when they had 
worked down, and had that long talking 
time at the bottom of the set, he said 
boldly—a little pale, she said, as she told 
me the story years after— 

“And what do you hear from home, 
Mrs. Graff?” 

And that splendid creature looked 
through him. Jove! how she must have 
looked through him! 

“Home!! Mr. Nolan!!! I thought you 
were the man who never wanted to hear of 
home again!”—and she walked directly up 
the deck to her husband, and left poor 
Nolan alone, as he always was. He did not 
dance again. I cannot give any history of 




64 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTR Y 

. ..■ ■ ■ ■ ■■■ ■■■ ■ ■■ F i ■■■ ■■ ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ 

him in order; nobody can now; and, in¬ 
deed, I am not trying to. 

These are the traditions, which I sort 
out, as I believe them, from the myths 
which have been told about this man for 
forty years. The lies that have been told 
about him are legion. The fellows used to 
say he was the “Iron Mask”; and poor 
George Pons went to his grave in the belief 
that this was the author of “Junius,” who 
was being punished for his celebrated libel 
on Thomas Jefferson. Pons was not very 
strong in the historical line. 

A happier story than either of these I 
have told is of the war. That came along 
soon after. I have heard this affair told in 
three or four ways—and, indeed, it may 
have happened more than once. But which 
ship it was on I cannot tell. However, in 
one, at least, of the great frigate-duels with 
the English, in which the navy was really 











However, in one, at least, of the frigate duels with the English. 

65 

















































THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


67 


baptized, it happened that a round-shot 
from the enemy entered one of our ports 
square, and took right down the officer of 
the gun himself, and almost every man of 
the guns crew. Now you may say what 
you choose about courage, but that it not 
a nice thing to see. But, as the men who 
were not killed picked themselves up, and 
as they and the surgeon’s people were 
carrying off the bodies, there appeared 
Nolan, in his shirt-sleeves, with the ram¬ 
mer in his hand, and, just as if he had been 
the officer, told them off with authority,— 
who should go to the cock-pit with the 
wounded men, who should stay with him 
—perfectly cheery, and with that way 
which makes men feel sure all is right and 
is going to be right. And he finished load¬ 
ing the gun with his own hands, aimed it, 
and bade the men fire. And there he stayed, 
captain of that gun, keeping those fellows 





68 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


in spirits, till the enemy struck—sitting on 
the carriage while the gun was cooling, 
though he was exposed all the time—show¬ 
ing them easier ways to handle heavy shot 
—making the raw hands laugh at their 
own blunders—and when the gun cooled 
again, getting it loaded and fired twice as 
often as any other gun on the ship. The 
captain walked forward by way of encourag¬ 
ing the men, and Nolan touched his hat 
and said— 

“I am showing them how we do this in 
the artillery, sir.” 

And this is the part of the story where 
all the legends agree; the commodore said— 

“I see you do, and I thank you, sir; and 
I shall never forget this day, sir, and you 
never shall, sir.” 

And after the whole thing was over, and 
he had the Englishman’s sword, in the 
midst of the state and ceremony of the 






There he stayed, captain of that gun. 


69 





























































THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


71 


quarterdeck, he said— 

“Where is Mr. Nolan? Ask Mr. Nolan 
to come here.” 

And when Nolan came, he said— 

“Mr. Nolan, we are all very grateful to 
you today; you are one of us today; you 
will be named in the despatches.” 

And then the old man took off his own 
sword of ceremony, and gave it to Nolan, 
and made him put it on. The man told 
me this who saw it. Nolan cried like a 
baby, and well he might. He had not worn 
a sword since that infernal day at Fort 
Adams. But always afterward on occa¬ 
sions of ceremony he wore that quaint old 
French sword of the commodore’s. 

The captain did mention him in the des¬ 
patches. It was always said he asked that 
he might be pardoned. He wrote a special 
letter to the Secretary of War. But nothing 
ever came of it. As I said, that was about 





72 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


the time when they began to ignore the 
whole transaction at Washington, and 
when Nolan’s imprisonment began to carry 
itself on because there was nobody to stop 
it without any new orders from home. 









73 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


rrrrrrrrrrn rn 


I have heard it said that he was with 
Porter when he took possession of the 
Nukahiwa Islands. Not this Porter, you 
know, but old Porter, his father, Essex 
Porter—that is, the old Essex Porter, not 
this Essex. As an artillery officer, who had 
seen service in the West, Nolan knew more 
about fortifications, embrasures, ravelins, 
stockades, and all that, than any of them 
did; and he worked with a right good-will 
in fixing that battery all right. I have 
always thought it was a pity Porter did 
not leave him in command with Gamble. 
That would have settled all the question 
about his punishment. We should have 
kept the islands, and at this moment we 








74 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


should have one station in the Pacific 
Ocean. Our French friends, too, when they 
wanted this little watering-place, would 
have found it was preoccupied. But Madi¬ 
son and the Virginians, of course, flung all 
that away. 

All that was near fifty years ago. If 
Nolan was thirty then, he must have been 
near eighty when he died. He looked sixty 
when he was forty. But he never seemed 
to me to change a hair afterwards. As I 
imagine his life, from what I have seen and 
heard of it, he must have been in every sea, 
and yet almost never on land. He must 
have known, in a formal way, more officers 
in our service than any man living knows. 
He told me once, with a grave smile, that 
no man in the world lived so methodical 
a life as he. “You know the boys say I am 
the Iron Mask, and you know how busy 
he was.” He said it did not do for any one 




THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


75 



These were very curious , indeed. 


to try to read all the time, more than to do 
anything else all the time; but that he read 
just five hours a day. “Then,” he said, “I 
keep up my note-books, writing in them at 
such and such hours from what I have been 
reading; and I include in these my scrap 
books.” These were very curious, indeed. 
















76 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 

. ....... 

He had six or eight, of different subjects. 
There was one of History, one of Natural 
Science, one which he called “Odds and 
Ends.” But they were not merely books of 
extracts from newspapers. They had bits 
of plants and ribbons, shells tied on, and 
carved scraps of bone and wood which he 
had taught the men to cut for him, and 
they were beautifully illustrated. He drew 
admirably. He had some of the funniest 
drawings there, and some of the most 
pathetic, that 1 have ever seen in my life. I 
wonder who will have Nolan’s scrapbooks? 

Well, he said his reading and his notes 
were his profession, and that they took five 
hours and two hours respectively of each 
day. “Then,” said he, “every man should 
have a diversion as well as a profession. 
My Natural History is my diversion.” 
That took two hours a day more. The men 














He read just five hours a day. 


77 

































THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


79 


used to bring him birds and fish, but on a 
long cruise he had to satisfy himself with 
centipedes and cockroaches and such small 
game. He was the only naturalist I ever 
met who knew anything about the habits 
of the house-fly and the mosquito. All these 
people can tell you whether they are Lepi~ 
doptera or Steptopotera ; but as for telling 
how you can get rid of them, or how they 
get away from you when you strike them 
—why, Linnaeus knew as little of that as 
John Foy, the idiot, did. These nine hours 
made Nolan s regular daily ‘ occupation.’* 
The rest of the time he talked or walked. 
Till he grew very old, he went aloft a great 
deal. He always kept up his exercise; and 
I never heard that he was ill. If any other 
man was ill, he was the kindest nurse in 
the world; and he knew more than half the 
surgeons do. Then if anybody was sick or 
died, or if the captain wanted him to, on 






80 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


any other occasion, he was always ready to 
read prayers. I have said that he read 
beautifully. 














THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


81 


My own acquaintance with Philip Nolan 
began six or eight years after the English 
war, on my first voyage after I was ap¬ 
pointed a midshipman. It was in the first 
days after our Slave-Trade treaty, while the 
Reigning House, which was still the House 
of Virginia, had still a sort of sentimental¬ 
ism about the suppression of the horrors 
of the Middle Passage, and something was 
sometimes done that way. We were in the 
South Atlantic on that business. From the 
time I joined, I believe I thought Nolan 
was a sort of lay chaplain—a chaplain with 
a blue coat. I never asked about him. 
Everything in the ship was strange to me. 
I knew it was green to ask questions, and 





82 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


I suppose I thought there was a “Plain- 
Buttons” on every ship. We had him to 
dine in our mess once a week, and the cau¬ 
tion was given that on that day nothing 
was to be said about home. But if they 
had told us not to say anything about the 
planet Mars or the Book of Deuteronomy, 
I should not have asked why; there were a 
great many things which seemed to me to 
have as little reason. I first came to under¬ 
stand anything about ‘‘the man without 
a country” one day when we overhauled 
a dirty little schooner which had slaves on 
board. An officer was sent to take charge 
of her, and, after a few minutes, he sent 
back his boat to ask that some one might 
be sent him who could speak Portugese. We 
were all looking over the rail when the mes¬ 
sage came, and we all wished we could 
interpret, when the captain asked who 
spoke Portugese. But none of the officers 





n« 

sMi 

‘sSlWta'.wV 












rM-v 


'mm 


A\ * W — 


H'e u;ere a// looking over the rail when the message came. 


83 














































































































































































































THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


85 


did; and just as the captain was sending 
forward to ask if any of the people could, 
Nolan stepped out and said he should be 
glad to interpret, if the captain wished, as 
he understood the language. The captain 
thanked him, fitted out another boat with 
him, and in this boat it was my luck to go. 

When we got there, it was such a scene 
as you seldom see, and never want to. 
Nastiness beyond account, and chaos run 
loose in the midst of the nastiness. There 
were not a great many of the negroes; but 
by way of making what there were under¬ 
stand that they were free, Vaughan had 
had their handcuffs and anklecuffs knocked 
off, and, for convenience’s sake, was put¬ 
ting them upon the rascals of the schoon¬ 
er’s crew. The negroes were, most of them, 
out of the hold, and swarming all round 
the dirty deck, with a central throng sur¬ 
rounding Vaughan and addressing him in 




86 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


every dialect, and patois of a dialect, from 
the Zulu click up to the Parisian of Bele- 
deljereed. 

As we came on deck, Vaughan looked 
down from a hogshead, on which he had 
mounted in desperation, and said— 

“For God’s love, is there anybody who 
can make these wretches understand some¬ 
thing? The men gave them rum, and that 
did not quiet them. I knocked that big 
fellow down twice, and that did not soothe 
him. And then I talked Choctaw to all of 
them together; and I’ll be hanged if they 
understood that as well as they understood 
the English.’’ 

Nolan said he could speak Portuguese, 
and one or two fine-looking Kroomen were 
dragged out, who, as it had been found 
already, had worked for the Portuguese on 
the coast at Fernando Po. 







\ 







SsMwSviV 


■UUiV W 


HV 


S'//. 


l , /SIIlESiv 

v • /•; i fit tlh mu TitIfllilill Mini 1 


rmltt’Tt-' 


Then there was such a yell of delight. 


87 


/ 



















































































































































































































































; ; :• . ■ ■ 







































































THE MAN WITHOUT^ A COUNTRY 89 


“Tell them they are free,” said Vaughan; 

and tell them that these rascals are to be 
hanged as soon as we can get rope enough.” 

Nolan “put that into Spanish”—that 
is, he explained it in such Portuguese as 
the Kroomen could understand, and they 
in turn to such of the negroes as could 
understand them. Then there was such a 
yell of delight, clinching of fists, leaping 
and dancing, kissing of Nolan’s feet, and 
a general rush made to the hogshead by 
way of spontaneous worship of Vaughan, 
as the deiis ex machina of the occasion. 

“Tell them,” said Vaughan, well pleased, 
“that I will take them all to Cape 
Palmas.” 

This did not answer so well. Cape 
Palmas was practically as far from the 
homes of most of them as New Orleans or 
Rio Janeiro was; that is, they would be 
eternally separated from home there. And 







90 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


their interpreters, as we could understand, 
instantly said, “Ah, non Palmas ,” and 
began to propose infinite other expedients 
in most voluble language. Vaughan was 
rather disappointed at this result of his 
liberality, and asked Nolan eagerly what 
they said. The drops stood on poor Nolan’s 
white forehead, as he hushed the men down, 
and said:— 

“He says, ‘Not Palmas.’ He says Take 
us home, take us to our own country, take 
us to our own house, take us to our own 
pickaninnies and our own women.’ He 
says he has an old father and mother who 
will die if they do not see him. And this 
one says he left his people all sick, and 
paddled down to Fernando to beg the 
white doctor to come and help them, and 
that these devils caught him in the bay 
just in sight of home, and that he has 
never seen anybody from home since then. 




THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


91 


And this one says,” choked out Nolan, 

that he has not heard a word from his 
home in six months, while he has been 
locked up in an infernal barracoon.” 

Vaughan always said he grew gray him¬ 
self while Nolan struggled through his in¬ 
terpretation. I, who did not understand 
anything of the passion involved in it, saw 
that the very elements were melting with 
fervent heat, and that something was to 
pay somewhere. Even the negroes them¬ 
selves stopped howling, as they saw Nolan s 
agony, and Vaughan’s almost equal agony 
of sympathy. As quick as he could get 
words, he said:— 

‘‘Tell them yes, yes, yes; tell them they 
shall go the Mountains of the Moon, if 
they will. If. I sail the schooner through 
the Great White Desert, they shall go 
home!” 

And after some fashion Nolan said so. 





92 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 



And then they all fell to kissing him again 
and wanted to rub his nose with theirs. 

But he could not stand it long; and get¬ 
ting Vaughan to say he might go back, he 
beckoned me down into our boat. As we 
lay back in the stern-sheets and the men 
gave way, he said to me: “Youngster, let 
that show you what it is to be without a 
family, without a home, and without a 















THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 93 

. .. 

country. And if you are ever tempted to 
say a word or to do a thing that shall put a 
bar between you and your family, your 
home, and your country, pray God in his 
mercy to take you that instant home to 
his own heaven. Stick by your family, boy; 
forget you have a self, while you do every¬ 
thing for them. Think of your home, boy; 
write and send, and talk about it. Let it 
be nearer and nearer to your thought, the 
farther you have to travel from it; and 
rush back to it when you are free, as that 
poor black slave is doing now. And for 
your country, boy” and the words rattled 
in his throat, “and for that flag,” and he 
pointed to the ship, “never dream a dream 
but of serving her as she bids you, though 
the service carry you through a thousand 
hells. No matter what happens to you, no 
matter who flatters you or who abuses you, 
never look at another flag, never let a night 






94 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 

pass but you pray God to bless that flag. 
Remember, boy, that behind all these men 
you have to do with, behind officers, and 
government, and people even, there is the 
Country Herself, your Country, and that 
you belong to Her, as you belong to your 
own mother. Stand by Her, boy, as you 
would stand by your mother, if those devils 
there had got hold of her today!” 

I was frightened to death by his calm, 
hard passion; but I blundered out that I 
would, by all that was holy, and that I 
had never thought of doing anything else. 
He hardly seemed to hear me; but he did, 
almost in a whisper, say: ‘‘0, if anybody 
had said so to me when 1 was of your age!” 

I think it was this half-confidence of his, 
which I never abused, for I never told this 
story till now, which afterward made us 
great friends. He was very kind to me. 
Often he sat up, or even got up, at night, 




THE MAN W1THOUT A COUNTR Y 95 

n ■ ■■ ■■■■■ ■ St t ■■mnmMmiimiMiimm lllli iMiMiT 

to walk the deck with me, when it was my 
watch. He explained to me a great deal of 
my mathematics, and I owe to him my 
taste for mathematics. He lent me books, 
and helped me about my reading. He 
never alluded so directly to his story again; 
but from one and another officer I have 
learned, in thirty years, what I am telling. 
When we parted from him in St. Thomas 
Harbor, at the end of our cruise, I was 
more sorry than I can tell. I was very 
glad to meet him again in 1830; and later 
in life, when I thought I had some influence 
in Washington, I moved heaven and earth to 
have him discharged. But it was like getting 
a ghost out of prison. They pretended there 
was no such man, and never was such a man. 
They will say so at the Department now! 
Perhaps they do not know. It will not be 
the first thing in the service of which the 
Department appears to know nothing! 






96 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 



There is a story that Nolan met Burr 
once on one of our vessels, when a party of 
Americans came on board in the Mediter¬ 
ranean. But this I believe to be a lie; or, 
rather, it is a myth, ben trovato , involving 
a tremendous blowing-up with which he 
sunk Burr—asking him how he liked to 
be “without a country.” But it is clear 
from Burr’s life, that nothing of the sort 
could have happened; and I mention this 
only as an illustration of the stories which 










THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


97 


get a-going where there is the least mystery 
at the bottom. 

So poor Philip Nolan had his wish ful¬ 
filled. I know but one fate more dreadful; 
it is the fate reserved for those men who 
shall have one day to exile themselves from 
their country because they have attempted 
her ruin, and shall have at the same time 
to see the prosperity and honor to which 
she rises when she has rid herself of them 
and their iniquities. The wish of poor No¬ 
lan, as we all learned to call him, not be¬ 
cause his punishment was too great, but 
because his repentance was so clear, was 
precisely the wish of every Bragg and Beau¬ 
regard who broke a soldier’s oath two years 
ago, and of every Maury and Barron who 
broke a sailor’s. I do not know how often 
they have repented. I do know that they 
have done all that in them lay that they 





THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


might have no country—that all the honors, 
associations, memories, and hopes which 
belong to “country’ ’ might be broken up 
into little shreds and distributed to the 
winds. I know, too, that their punish¬ 
ment, as they vegetate through what is 
left of life to them in wretched Boulognes 
and Leicester Squares, where they are 
destined to upbraid each other till they 
die, will have all the agony of Nolan’s, 
with the added pang that every one who 
sees them will see them to despise and 
execrate them. They will have their wish 
like him. 

For him, poor fellow, he repented of his 
folly, and then, like a man, submitted to 
the fate he had asked for. He never inten¬ 
tionally added to the difficulty or delicacy 
of the charge of those who had him in hold. 
Accidents would happen; but they never 
happened from his fault. Lieutenant Trux- 





THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


99 


ton told me that, when Texas was annexed, 
there was a careful discussion among the 
officers whether they should get hold of 
Nolan’s handsome set of maps and cut 
Texas out of it—from the map of the world 
and the map of Mexico. The United States 
had been cut out when the atlas was bought 
for him. But it was voted, rightly enough, 
that to do this would be virtually to reveal 
to him what had happened, or as Harry 
Cole said, to make him think Old Burr 
had succeeded. 

So it was from no fault of Nolan’s that a 
great botch happened at my own table, 
when, for a short time, I was in command 
of the George Washington corvette, on the 
South America station. We were lying in 
the La Plata, and some of the officers, who 
had been on shore and had just joined 
again, were entertaining us with accounts 
of their misadventures in riding the half- 




100 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 





When he was catching wild horses in Texas. 


wild horses of Buenos Ayres. Nolan was 
at table, and was in an unusually bright 
and talkative mood. Some story of a tum¬ 
ble reminded him of an adventure of his 
own when he was catching wild horses in 
Texas with his adventurous cousin, at a 
time when he must have been quite a boy. 
He told the story with a good deal of spirit 
—so much so, that the silence which often 
follows a good story hung over the table 










THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 101 

... ■■ ■■■■■■■■■■■i 

for an instant, to be broken by Nolan 
himself. For he asked perfectly uncon¬ 
sciously:—' 

“Pray, what has become of Texas? After 
the Mexicans got their independence, I 
thought that province of Texas would come 
forward very fast. It is really one of the 
finest regions on earth; it is the Italy of 
this continent. But I have not seen or 
heard a word of Texas for near twenty 
years.” 

There were two Texan officers at the 
table. The reason he had never heard of 
Texas was that Texas and her affairs had 
been painfully cut out of his newspapers 
since Austin began his settlements; so that, 
while he read of Honduras and Tamaulipas, 
and, till quite lately, of California—this 
virgin province, in which his brother had 
traveled so far, and, I believe, had died, 
had ceased to be to him. Waters and 





102 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


Williams, the two Texas men, looked 
grimly at each other and tried not to 
laugh. Edward Morris had his attention 
attracted by the third link in the chain of 
the captain’s chandelier. Watrous was 
seized with a convulsion of sneezing. Nolan 
himself saw that something was to pay, 
he did not know what. And I, as master 
of the feast, had to say— 

“Texas is out of the map, Mr. Nolan. 
Have you seen Captain Back’s curious 
account of Sir Thomas Roe’s Welcome?” 

After that cruise I never saw Nolan 
again. I wrote to him at least twice a 
year, for in that voyage we became even 
confidentially intimate; but he never wrote 
to me. The other men tell me that in those 
fifteen years he aged very fast, as well he 
might indeed, but that he was still the 
same gentle, uncomplaining, silent sufferer 
that he ever was, bearing as best be could 





THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 103 



More anxious than ever to teach the hoys. 


his self-appointed punishment—rather less 
social, perhaps, with new men whom he did 
not know, but more anxious, apparently, 
than ever to serve and befriend and teach 
the boys, some of whom fairly seemed to 
worship him. And now it seems the dear 
old fellow is dead. He has found a home 
at last, and a country. 











104 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


Since writing this, and while considering 
whether or no I would print it, as a warn¬ 
ing to the young Nolans and Vallandig- 
hams and Tatnalls of today of what it is 
to throw away a country, I have received 
from Danforth, who is on board the 
“Levant,’’ a letter which gives an account 
of Nolan’s last hours. It removes all my 
doubts about telling this story. 

To understand the first words of the 
letter, the non-professional reader should 
remember that after 1817, the position of 
every officer who had Nolan in charge was 
one of the greatest delicacy. The govern¬ 
ment had failed to renew the order of 1807 
regarding him. What was a man to do? 
Should he let him go? What, then, if he 
were called to account by the Department 
for violating the order of 1807? Should he 
keep him? What, then, if Nolan should be 
liberated some day, and should bring an 





THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 105 


action for false imprisonment or kidnap¬ 
ping against every man who had had him 
in charge? I urged and pressed this upon 
Southard, and I have reason to think that 
other officers did the same thing. But the 
Secretary always said, as they so often do 
at Washington, that there were no special 
orders to give, and that we must act on 
our own judgment. That means, “If you 
succeed, you will be sustained; if you fail, 
you will be disavowed.” Well, as Danforth 
says, all that is over now, though I do not 
know but I expose myself to a criminal 
prosecution on the evidence of the very 
revelation I am making. 

Here is the letter:— 

“Levant, 2° 2' S. @ 131° W. 

“Dear Fred : I try to find heart and life 
to tell you that it is all over with dear old 
Nolan. I have been with him on this voy¬ 
age more than I ever was, and I can under- 





106 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 



stand wholly now the way in which you 
used to speak of the dear old fellow. I could 
see that he was not strong, but I had no 
idea the end was so near. The doctor has 
been watching him very carefully, and yes¬ 
terday morning came to me and told me 
that Nolan was not so well, and had not 




















THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 107 


left his state-room—a thing I never remem¬ 
ber before. He had let the doctor come and 
see him as he lay there—the first time the 
doctor had been in the state-room—and he 
said he should like to see me. Oh, dear! 
do you remember the mysteries we boys 
used to invent about his room in the old 
‘Intrepid' days? Well, I went in, and there, 
to be sure, the poor fellow lay in his berth, 
smiling pleasantly as he gave me his hand, 
but looking very frail. I could not help a 
glance round, which showed me what a little 
shrine he had made of the box he was lying 
in. The stars and stripes were traced up 
above and around a picture of Washington, 
and he had painted a majestic eagle,with 
lightnings blazing from his beak and his 
foot just clasping the whole globe, which 
his wings overshadowed. The dear old boy 
saw my glance, and said, with a sad smile, 
‘Here, you see, I have a country!' And 




108 THEMANWITHOUT A COUNTRY 


then he pointed to the foot of his bed, 
where I had not seen before a great map 
of the United States, as he had drawn it 
from memory, and which he had there to 
look upon as he lay. Quaint, queer old 
names were on it, in large letters: ‘Indian 
Territory,’ ‘Mississippi Territory,’ and 
‘Louisiana Territory,’ as I suppose our 
fathers learned such things; but the old 
fellow had patched in Texas, too; he had 
carried his western boundary all the way 
to the Pacific, but on that shore he had 
defined nothing. 

“ ‘0 Danforth,’ he said, ‘I know I am 
dying. I cannot get home. Surely you will 
tell me something now?—Stop! stop! Do 
not speak till I say what I am sure you 
know, that there is not in this ship, that 
there is not in America—God bless her!—a 
more loyal man than I. There cannot be 
a man who loves the old flag as I do, or 








“0 Danforth” he said, “/ know 1 am dying." 


109 














































































































































































































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THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 111 


prays for it as I do, or hopes for it as I do. 
There are thirty-four stars in it now, Dan- 
forth. I thank God for that, though I do 
not know what their names are. There has 
never been one taken away: I thank God 
for that. I know by that that there has 
never been any successful Burr. 0 Dan- 
forth, Danforth,’ he sighed out, ‘how like 
a wretched night’s dream a boy’s idea of 
personal fame or of separate sovereignty 
seems, when one looks back on it after such 
a life as mine! But tell me—tell me some¬ 
thing, tell me anything, Danforth, before 
I die!’ 

“Ingham, I swear to you that I felt like 
a monster that I had not told him every¬ 
thing before. Danger or no danger, delicacy 
or no delicacy, who was I, that I should 
have been acting the tyrant all this time 
over this dear, sainted old man, who had 
years ago expiated, in his whole manhood’s 




112 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


life, the madness of a boy’s treason? ‘Mr. 
Nolan,’ said I, ‘I will tell you everything 
you ask about. Only, where shall I begin?’ 

“Oh, the blessed smile that crept over 
his white face! and he pressed my hand and 
said, ‘God bless you! Tell me their names,’ 
he said, and he pointed to the stars on the 
flag. ‘The last I know is Ohio. My father 
lived in Kentucky. But I have guessed 
Michigan and Indiana and Mississippi— 
that was where Fort Adams is—they make 
twenty. But where are your other four¬ 
teen? You have not cut up any of the old 
ones, I hope?’ 

“Well, that was not a bad text, and I 
told him the names in as good order as I 
could, and he bade me take down his 
beautiful map and draw them in as best I 
could with my pencil. He was wild with 
delight about Texas, told me how his cousin 
died there; he had marked a gold cross near 





THE MAN WITHOUT^ A COUNTRY 1 13 


where he supposed his grave was; and he 
had guessed at Texas. Then he was delighted 
as he saw California and Oregon—that, he 
said, he had suspected partly, because he 
had never been permitted to land on that 
V- 








114 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


shore, though the ships were there so much. 
‘And the men,’ he said laughing, ‘brought 
off a good deal besides furs/ Then he went 
back heavens, how far!—to ask about the 
Chesapeake, and what was done to Barron 
for surrendering her to the Leopard, and 
whether Burr ever tried again—and he 
ground his teeth with the only passion he 
showed. But in a moment that was over, 
and he said, ‘God forgive me, for I am sure 
I forgive him/ Then he asked about the 
old war—told me the true story of his 
serving the gun the day we took the Java 
—asked about dear old David Porter, as 
he called him. Then he settled down more 
quietly, and very happily, to hear me tell 
in an hour the history of fifty years. 

“How I wished it had been somebody 
who knew something! But I did as well as 
I could. I told him of the English war. I 
told him about Fulton and the steamboat 





THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 115 


beginning. I told him about old Scott, 
and Jackson; told him all I could think of 
about the Mississippi, and New Orleans, 
an d Texas, and his own old Kentucky. 
And do you think, he asked who was in 
command of the Legion of the West.’ 1 
told him it was a very gallant officer named 
Grant, and that, by our last news, he was 
about to establish his headquarters at 
Vicksburg. Then, Where was Vicksburg?’ 
I worked that out on the map; it was about 
a hundred miles, more or less, above his 
old Fort Adams; and I thought Fort Adams 
must be a ruin now. ‘It must be at Old 
Vick s plantation, at Walnut Hills,’ said 
he: ‘well, that is a change!’ 

I tell you, Ingham, it was a hard thing 
to condense the history of half a century 
into that talk with a sick man. And I do 
not now know what I told him—of emi¬ 
gration, and the means of it—of steam- 




116 THE MAN WITH0UT\4 COUNTRY 


boats, and railroads, and telegraphs of 
inventions, and books, and literature of 
the colleges, and West Point, and the Naval 
School—but with the queerest interrup¬ 
tions that ever you heard. You see it was 
Robinson Crusoe asking all the accumu¬ 
lated questions of fifty-six years! 

“I remember he asked, all of a sudden, 
who was President now; and when I told 
him, he asked if Old Abe was General 
Benjamin Lincoln’s son. He said he met 
old General Lincoln, when he was quite a 
boy himself, at some Indian treaty. I said 
no, that Old Abe was a Kentuckian like 
himself, but I could not tell him of what 
family; he had worked up from the ranks. 
‘Good for him!’ cried Nolan; ‘I am glad of 
that. As I have brooded and wondered, I 
have thought our danger was in keeping 
up those regular successions in the first 
families.’ Then I got talking about my 






THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 117 


visit to Washington. I told him of meet¬ 
ing the Oregon Congressman, Harding; I 
told him about the Smithsonian, and the 
Exploring Expedition; I told him about the 
Capitol, and the statues for the pediment, 
and Crawford’s Liberty, and Greenough’s 
Washington; Ingham, I told him every¬ 
thing I could think of that would show 
the grandeur of his country and its pros¬ 
perity; but I could not make up my mouth 
to tell him a word about this infernal 
rebellion! 

“And he drank it in and enjoyed it as I 
cannot tell you. He grew more and more 
silent, yet I never thought he was tired or 
faint. I gave him a glass of water, but he 
just wet his lips, and told me not to go 
away. Then he asked me to bring the 
Presbyterian ‘Book of Public Prayer,’ which 
lay there, and said, with a smile, that it 
would open at the right place—and so it 




118 THEMAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


did. There was his double red mark down 
the page; and I knelt down and read, and 
he repeated with me, ‘For ourselves and 
our country, 0 gracious God, we thank 
Thee, that, notwithstanding our manifold 
transgressions of Thy holy laws, Thou hast 
continued to us Thy marvellous kindness’ 
—and so to the end of that thanksgiving. 
Then he turned to the end of the same book, 
and I read the words more familiar to me: 
‘Most heartily we beseech Thee with Thy 
favor to behold and bless Thy servant, 
the President of the United States, and all 
others in authority’—and the rest of the 
Episcopal collect. ‘Danforth,’ said he, ‘I 
have repeated those prayers night and 
morning, it is now fifty-five years.’ And 
then he said he would go to sleep. He bent 
me down over him and kissed me; and he 
said, Look in my Bible, Danforth, when 
I am gone.’ And I went away. 





THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 119 



We looked in his Bible and there was a slip of paper. 

“But I had no thought it was the end. 
I thought he was tired and would sleep. I 
knew he was happy, and I wanted him to 
be alone. 

“But in an hour, when the doctor went 
in gently, he found Nolan had breathed 
his life away with a smile. He had some¬ 
thing pressed close to his lips. It was his 











120 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


father’s badge of the Order of the Cin¬ 
cinnati. 

“We looked in his Bible and there was 
a slip of paper at the place where he had 
marked the text:— 

“ They desire a country, even a heavenly: 
wherefore God is not ashamed to be called 
their God: for He hath prepared for them a 
city/ 

“On this slip of paper he had written: 

“ Bury me in the sea; it has been my 
home, and I love it. But will not some one 
set up a stone for my memory at Fort 
Adams or at Orleans, that my disgrace 
may not be more than I ought to bear? 
Say on it:— 




“ ‘In Memory of 

‘PHILIP NOLAN, 


Lieutenant in the Army of the United 
States. 


'HE LOVED HIS COUNTRY AS NO OTHER 
MAN HAS LOVED HER; BUT NO MAN 
DESERVED LESS AT HER HANDS'.” 



121 




INCIDENTAL NOTES 

Major-general Robert Ross led the Brit¬ 
ish army that marched up the river from 
Chesapeake Bay and burned the capital at 
Washington during the War of 1812. 

Aaron Burr was a political leader of the 
early days of the Republic. He served as 
Vice-President 1801-1805. After his term 


22 


in office he raised a small company of men 
with the intention of seizing a part of the 
Western territory of America and forming 
an empire. His plot failed and he was 
arrested and tried for treason but the evi¬ 
dence was not sufficient to convict him and 
he was freed. 


George, Duke of Clarence, was a brother 
of King Edward IV. He was executed in 
1479 for plotting against his brother’s life 
and scheming to obtain the Crown of 
England. 


Benedict Arnold was an American gen¬ 
eral who endeavored to betray the Revolu¬ 
tionary Cause by Surrendering West Point 
to the British. His plans were discovered 
in time to prevent the surrender but Arnold 
managed to escape and died in England, a 
pensionair of the Crown. 


123 




Hesiod was an early Greek poet who 
wrote about farming in verse. He is used 
as a synonym for something very innocent 
and peaceful. 


George Canning was the British foreign 
minister in 1823 and one of the prominent 
English Statesmen. 


Esprit Flechier was the Bishop of Nimes 
and a famous writer of sermons and 
moralistic essays. He was very popular in 
the 17th and 18th centuries. 


The “Iron Mask’’ was a famous prisoner 
in the Bastille during the reign of Louis 
XIV who was always masked with a velvet 
mask that legend has called iron. His 
identity was never known and many 
theories have been advanced as to whom 


24 





he really was and what his offence had 
been. 


The Letters of Junius were a pamphlet 
attack made on Jefferson that have been 
attributed to several political authors. 
Their real author has never been discov¬ 
ered. 

Essex Porter was the Captain of the 
Essex, a frigate, that wrought havoc on 
the British vessels in the Pacific during 
the War of 1812 until it was captured near 

Chili in 1814. 

Linnaeus was a scientist who contributed 
to the study of nature the system of classi¬ 
fication that is in use today. 

John Foy was a character in one of 
Wordsworth’s poems. 


125 



Bragg and Beauregard were two gen¬ 
erals in the United States Army who re¬ 
signed to accept commissions in the Con¬ 
federate Army at the outbreak of the Civil 
War. Maury and Barron were Naval offi¬ 
cers who did the same. 


Barron was in command of the Chesa¬ 
peake when she was stopped at sea by the 
English frigate, the Leopard, and several 
of her men seized by the Leopard as British 
deserters. This was one of the causes of 
the War of 1812. 

General Benjamin Lincoln was one of 
the Revolutionary generals. He was after¬ 
wards Secretary of War for several years. 


126 





































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